SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 11 February 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Wheeler, William W
(1853-1916) US author whose Utopia Rest (1894) includes some occult elements, like the mysterious presence of a redeemed Adam and Eve in a world based on Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888); Shapeshifter Aliens from another planet are also in evidence. [JC]
Planet of the Apes [comic]
US letter-size saddle-stapled Comics-format magazine printed on newsprint. Published by Marvel Comics under their Curtis Magazines subsidiary imprint. Editor: Roy Thomas. 29 monthly issues, 1974 to 1977. / Licensed to Marvel Comics in 1974, this Tie may have been the company's most successful black-and-white comics-format SF Magazine of the 1970s. Adapting ...
Jorgensen, Ivar
Floating Pseudonym – also spelled or misspelled Ivar Jorgenson – first used in the Ziff-Davis magazines Amazing Stories and Fantastic, subsequently used in If, Imagination and Imaginative Tales. Its main user was Paul W Fairman (whom see ...
Counter-Earth
An imagined extra planet of our own solar system, supposedly sharing Earth's orbit but always concealed from observation by its position on the far side of the Sun (that is, at or near the L3 Lagrange Point of the Earth-Sun system). The concept is ancient: Pythagoras proposed both the world, which he called Antichthon, and the mechanism of its concealment in the fifth century BCE. Although Counter-Earth – or ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...